Warcraft Movie - Garona Featurette
A Garona featurette has been released! More movie reviews are out, with positive reviews from fans and mixed reviews from critics.

Vanilla Dungeon Objective XP Nerf

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

What Id love to know is why this was done so stealthily.
I have no issues with 1-40 being harder, but why nerf BC and Wrath dungeon xp?
What's the basis for this claim? We didn't touch BC or Wrath dungeon experience.

One additional bullet point that should have been in yesterday's hotfix notes is that we did reduce the experience from the dungeon "scenario" objectives for Classic dungeons (levels 15-58). Those awards were new as of Warlords, but for low-level dungeons they were largely were redundant with the numerous quests available inside each dungeon. Dungeons are intended to be rewarding, and they still are, but zoning into Deadmines and completing ~5 quests, plus the kill experience for everything, plus a couple more quests' worth of experience from the dungeon objectives, was overkill. When we looked at low-level dungeons and tried to understand what had changed to make them so much more lucrative over time, that bonus objective experience immediately stood out.

There wasn't any intent to hide this change (it's not a subtle change, and obviously it was immediately noticed). There were a total of 8 different hotfixes rolled out over the past week or two as part of this entire plan, and that one just slipped through the cracks when we were writing up the documentation of the changes.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PvP Gear Item Levels
Hey guys! Just want to correct the basis for this discussion.

Currently, what's going on with the ilvl for gear from rated PvP in Legion is: it's decided dynamically when it's rewarded to you, and that decision is based on your rating.

So while the lowest version of an item may be 870, it will have its ilvl increased to 880, 890, or 900 -- based on your rating. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)Discipline Priest -- Legion Beta Feedback
Thanks for all the feedback. To revisit something that we touched on back at Blizzcon, but perhaps haven't talked about since then: Discipline is the most complex healer to play in 7.0 by a wide margin, and is possibly the most advanced core rotation of any spec. We know this and are generally okay with it, even though we still want to manage it within reason. It is to some extent inevitable due to the mixture of DPS- and heal-type targeting that Disc has to frequently swap between, something that no other spec asks of you outside of specific talents. Also, Disc is intentionally positioned against Holy, which is one of the more accessible healers in 7.0.

Feedback from all players is still very useful for looking at potential skill-floor issues, but 7.0 Discipline is intended to be something you opt into if you are seeking out the mixed DPS/heal gameplay that it's built around. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

What happened to the awesome class titles like Highlord that you got from completing the artifact quest in alpha?
Felt premature to award titles like those so quickly. They are now earned by completing your Class Order campaign. (WarcraftDevs)

The drop rate on the archi mount is being reduced on the pre xpac patch ?
No - Mythic Archimonde and Blackhand’s mounts will become rare drops when Legion launches. (WarcraftDevs)

Prepare for the release of the Warcraft movie by reading the official prequel! Written by best-selling author Christie Golden, Durotan takes you into the heart of the Frostwolf Clan as they struggle to survive on a dying world.

In the world of Draenor, the strong and fiercely independent Frostwolf Clan are faced with increasingly harsh winters and thinning herds. When Gul’dan, a mysterious outsider, arrives in Frostfire Ridge offering word of new hunting lands, Durotan, the Clan’s chieftain, must make an impossible decision: abandon the territory, pride, and traditions of his people, or lead them into the unknown.

Pick up this tale of survival, conflict, and magic at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and many other fine booksellers.

Warcraft Movie Reviews
Collider and ETC News did a review of the Warcraft movie with some people who know about the game and those that don't.

Warcraft Easter Eggs
There are lots of Easter eggs in WoW and this video covers just a few of them.

Warcraft Movie Footage
Even more Warcraft movie footage has been released, with some new scenes. A few critic reviews are in, but actualplayersseem to like it.

Patch 6.2.4 Hotfixes - May 24: Leveling Hotfixes

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Note from the developers:

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve rolled out a series of hotfixes aimed at improving overall pacing and playability of the low-level (1-20) experience. We started by adding a number of modern conveniences to our low-level quest experience, and will continue to roll these improvements forward across other legacy content in the future. We’ve also made some improvements to the overall pace of combat at low levels: Due to the accumulated effect of years’ worth of max-level tuning adjustments, many classes were killing low-level enemies nearly instantaneously, even without heirloom gear or other advantages. A summary of the hotfixes follows:

Most quest bosses from level 1-20 should now be multitap and will scale their health with the numbers of players fighting them.

Added dynamic respawn behavior to most level 1-20 outdoor areas, so that spawns will be more readily available during times of high player traffic.

Players who die in low-level dungeons should now release to the entrance of the dungeon, consistent with the practice in dungeons from more recent expansions.

Reduced player damage at low levels to improve overall combat pacing. In general, Strength and Agility classes saw a larger reduction in damage than did casters. Damage dealt is unchanged from level 40 onwards.

We see these changes as the beginning, rather than an endpoint – much work remains to improve tuning and pacing of the old-world level-up experience, and our efforts will continue into Legion and beyond.

Warcraft Movie–Inspired Transmog Items Now Available
The movie transmog items are now live! Be sure to check the mail on the first character you log in to for the items.

The Warcraft movie is almost here, and we’re celebrating by equipping heroes of the Horde and the Alliance with a set of with movie-inspired transmogrification items. Beginning today through August 1, players who log in to World of Warcraft will receive this special commemorative cosmetic gear to permanently add to their collection.

Remember, only characters of the associated faction are able to use these items, and each set is sent to the first Horde and Alliance character to log in. The items themselves are Bind on Account so you are free to move them around once you get them from the mail!

Venture into the game to get yours today!

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PvPHow many prestige ranks are there? And do they increase in amount needed per level for the next rank?
At launch there will be 4 Prestige Ranks and additional ranks will be added each season. (WarcraftDevs)

in #legion pvp will secondary stats be normalized too? If I want to do a mastery build in pvp will it just get flattened out?
Correct. The secondary stats on your gear will not matter in PvP instances. (WarcraftDevs)

Overwatch Live - Guides and More
Overwatch went live last night and Overpwn has hero and map guides to help you get started!

Final Boss - Brewmaster Monk Spec Preview
Final Boss is back with a second round of spec previews.

For every point above item level 800, your stats in PvP are increased by 0.1%.

Someone with item level 900 gear is only 10% stronger than someone with item level 800 gear. (The same increase that a 10 item level increase gives in Warlords.)

When you win a Battleground, Skirmish, Arena, or Rated Battleground, you have a chance to receive a piece of gear directly.

Your first few victories per week in each rated bracket will reward a guaranteed piece of gear, which has its item level increased based on your rating in the bracket.

Any time you are awarded gear, it has a chance to have its item level increased further.

There is a system in place to reduce the likelihood you will get the same item twice

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In Legion, we’re making some pretty big changes to our PvP systems to make combat against your fellow players more accessible, balanced, and rewarding. Some of the biggest changes we’re making are related to gear—both how it affects your character in PvP, and how it’s awarded. We want to take a bit of time to share with you more of our thoughts on how we arrived at this new PvP gear design and why we think it will create a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

First, we need to share a little high-level philosophy about why we have gear in World of Warcraft. WoW is a game about your character, their adventures in the world of Azeroth, and their growth in power. One of the foundations of the game is being rewarded for your efforts with gear that makes you stronger. WoW offers a wide variety of activities, including quests, dungeons, raiding, and PvP—and while players may find that certain parts of the game appeal most to them, everyone wants to be rewarded fairly for their effort and skill. PvP is no different: players should be rewarded, and their characters should become more powerful, for participating in PvP—and in Legion, we want to reward them in a way that matters not just in PvP, but across all of the game.

We’ve traditionally had different goals for PvP and PvE gear, and how much power it gives you relative to your enemies. For example, in PvE content, it feels good to gain gear and eventually overpower a once-dangerous monster. As players take on more difficult raiding content, it is important that the monsters grow in power and that the gear they drop does too. Over the years, we’ve added a lot of different raid difficulties to accommodate the variety of player types we have. This has resulted in several tiers of gear that make taking on more challenging content feel more rewarding.

In PvP, we want that same feeling of progression, but we have to manage how much stronger you can be compared to your enemies—other players.While a raid boss doesn’t mind when a team of players massively outgears them, it’s a frustrating experience for other players. So, our challenge has been to find a way to allow your character to become stronger through PvP without making your opponents feel like they can’t compete. On top of that, we don’t want to undermine the value of earning gear through other types of gameplay, such as raiding.

We’ve tried a number of solutions in the past. We introduced Resilience in Wrath of the Lich King, and then in Mists, we added PvP Power to the mix as well. In Warlords, PvP gear was given a second PvP item level, and we scaled down gear from non-PvP sources. All of these solutions have worked to some degree, but also made PvP gear needlessly complicated and hindered crossover play. PvP players feel like their gear isn’t useful in PvE circumstances, and vice versa—and when the gear you’ve earned only makes you more powerful in certain situations, these rewards simply feel less rewarding. Going forward, we feel it would be better if the gear awarded in PvE and PvP was just the same. No special item levels. No PvP-specific stats. Playing any part of the game will allow you to get rewards that are meaningful everywhere.

So, assuming we want to reward the same gear in PvE and PvP, how can we handle the conflicting goals we mentioned before? We’re going to have to change what gear means in PvP.

For starters, we have to shrink the power gap that gear creates in PvP. At first, we considered ignoring gear altogether, but it felt counter-intuitive that gear offered no growth in power at all. We also explored an option that involved scaling PvP gear to within a certain item level range, but this was complicated and made the distribution of secondary stats more important than item level. We think it’s important that if a player sees a piece of gear that is an item level upgrade, they will want to equip it.

We ultimately arrived at a solution where we set player stats automatically in PvP and increase those stats based on your average item level. Players would understand that their stats didn’t come from gear, but that the quality of their gear does matter. Currently, we’ve tuned the system such that for every point above item level 800, your stats are increased by 0.1%. This means that someone with item level 900 gear is only 10% stronger than someone with item level 800 gear. For comparison, that’s roughly the same increase that a mere 10 item level increase gives in Warlords of Draenor. This allows us to make getting gear feel good in general, while shrinking the power gap to an acceptable range.

Now that we’ve limited the power gap gear can create in PvP, we can offer great gear rewards on par with the rest of the game—but now we need to address how it’s rewarded. One of the big changes in Legion is that gear will no longer be delivered through PvP currencies and vendors. Of course, we know a lot of players like the predictable nature of buying gear from vendors. They can select exactly the item they want and never receive an item they don’t want. It sounds like a perfect situation, but it is also an emotionally flat, predictable experience. There is no anticipation about what your reward will be. No exhilaration when you get something you want. No disappointment when you get something you don’t. We want to bring that emotional experience to PvP rewards—while still doing our best to minimize the amount of disappointment you experience.

In Legion, when players win a Battleground, Skirmish, Arena, or Rated Battleground, they have a chance to receive a piece of gear directly. Furthermore, your first few victories per week in each rated bracket will reward a guaranteed piece of gear, which has its item level increased based on your rating in the bracket. For both systems, gear works like it does in the rest of Legion. Any time you are awarded gear, it has a chance to have its item level increased further.

We understand that randomness in gearing has been problematic for PvP in the past, but we think that the aforementioned changes to PvP gear resolve the vast majority of the issues we’ve encountered before. In Legion, your primary goal in PvP will be increasing your average item level. Getting (or not getting) that perfectly itemized trinket won’t be something you’ll have to worry about. We also have systems in place to reduce the likelihood you’ll see the same item twice, which will help round out your set of gear. The biggest benefit of reducing the predictability in gearing in PvP is we can offer gear on par with the rest of World of Warcraft’s end-game activities. Not only will it make receiving gear from PvP more exciting and rewarding, but it also makes PvP more attractive to all WoW players.

There’s also been some concern from both PvEers and PvPers that “raiders will just do Arena to get easy gear” and “gladiators will just do Mythic raids to get easy gear.” We feel it’s important to remember how challenging both types of gameplay can be. Downing Mythic bosses and earning Gladiator rating are two of the most difficult accomplishments in our game. We think players who have demonstrated skill at those levels deserve to be rewarded with better gear.

We spent a lot of time thinking about how to improve the PvP gear situation for everyone who loves World of Warcraft. We appreciate hearing your thoughts about these changes, so be sure to post your thoughts in the comments below.

Armory Stats - Proving Grounds
With the news that Proving Grounds will no longer be a requirement for Heroic Dungeons in Legion, we are taking one last look at the completion rate in Warlords. The data used today is a sample of characters from 1.9 million accounts. We also did this earlier in Warlords of Draenor, which you can see here.

You can see scoreboards on WoWProgress for DPS, Healing, and Tank endless.

Don't see a chart? Enable javascript!

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Robert Kazinsky Interview Questions
We will have the chance to ask Robert Kazinsky some questions soon and wanted to get in questions from the community as well. Feel free to submit questions below!

Classeswill gnome hunter be released before or after legions launch?
Gnome Hunters will be available on day-one of the #Legion pre-expansion patch. https://t.co/uXUNZy12km (WarcraftDevs)

ItemsWith Legion having alot of legendaries will we be able to transmog them. If not, can we atleast hide Helm/Cloak legendaries?
You will be able to transmog #Legion legendaries to other appearances and vice versa. (WarcraftDevs)

Artifact Weaponsartifact trait cost seems to double after 12 ranks, ~575 to 1260 for rank 13? intended?
Yes; after 12 traits you are transitioning past the level-up experience. Around that time, you will accrue (1/2) https://t.co/OsNZDGDyv3 (WarcraftDevs)
Artifact Knowledge which will increase the rate at which you gain Artifact Power overall. (2/2) (WarcraftDevs)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. (2013) (OccupyGStreet)Is it really a myth though? Maybe those rising aren't complaining, a silent majority? This btw is why people play Vanilla.
Our data suggested it was a myth. Note that "not everyone should be able to do this" is a fine answer too. (OccupyGStreet)How do you feel about it now? Was the data right? Did the myth have some truth?
I think "hard" is just a difference audience. You have to choose. But you can't make hard stuff intended for easy players. (OccupyGStreet)
I love Dark Souls. But that's because it is targeted at gamers like me, not ALL gamers. (OccupyGStreet)hard is what people want. It's human psychological. You feel more accomplished when finishing something hard.
*If* you finish. If you quit because it's too hard or you don't want hard then the developer lost a player. (OccupyGStreet)if you don't want hard then why play. We are already wasting time on a game, why not make it rewarding?
There are a lot of easy games that are popular. I think that's fine. (OccupyGStreet)
My caution for developers is decide who your audience is and don't try to be all things to all players. (OccupyGStreet)

looking at that. I am wondering was cata bad move? Players seems more acceptance to this model rather than WOD simple pruning
It depends if your intended audience is engaged players who want more or returning / lapsed players who might be overwhelmed. (OccupyGStreet)

Overwatch Short - Solider 76: Hero
The final animated short for this season has been released! It tells some more of Solider 76's story.

Overwatch - Will You Play?
Overwatch is almost here! Now that everyone has had a chance to try the game, will you be playing at launch?